The Newark Earthworks in Newark and Heath, Ohio, consists of three sections of preserved earthworks: the Great Circle Earthworks, the Octagon Earthworks, and the Wright Earthworks. This complex, built by the Hopewell culture between 250 AD and 500 AD, contains the largest earthen enclosures in the world, being about 3,000 acres in extent. Today, the preserved site covers 206 acres, and is operated as a state park by the Ohio Historical Society. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark. In 2006, Newark Earthworks was also designated as the "official prehistoric monument of the State of Ohio."[2]

This is part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, one of 14 sites nominated in January 2008 by the U.S. Department of the Interior for potential submission by the United States to the UNESCO World Heritage List.[3]

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Built by the Hopewell culture between 250 AD and 500 AD, the earthworks were used as places of ceremony, social gathering, trade, and worship. However, the primary purpose of the Octagon earthwork itself was scientific. The Newark Earthwork site is the largest surviving Hopewell earthwork complex in North America. The culture built many earthen mounds. Over many years, they built the single largest earthwork enclosure complex in the Ohio River Valley. The earthworks cover several square miles. Scholars have demonstrated that the Octagon Earthworks comprise a lunar observatory for tracking the moon's orbit during its 18.6-year cycle.

Panoramic view from within the Great Circle, the wall of which can be seen in the background.

The 1,054-foot (321 m) wide Newark Great Circle is one of the largest circular earthwork in the Americas, at least in construction effort. The 8 feet (2.4 m) high walls surround a 5 feet (1.5 m) deep moat, except at the entrance where the dimensions are even greater and more impressive. Researchers have used archaeogeodesy and archaeoastronomy to analyze the placements, alignments, dimensions, and site-to-site interrelationships of the earthworks. This research has revealed that the prehistoriccultures in the area had advanced scientific understanding as the basis of their complex construction.

Today, the Great Circle Earthworks are preserved in a public park in Heath.

In 1982 researchers from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana concluded that the complex was a lunar observatory, designed to track motions of the moon, including the northernmost point of the 18.6-year cycle of the lunar orbit. The moon rises at that time within one-half of a degree of the octagon's exact center. The earthwork is twice as precise as the complex at Stonehenge (assuming Stonehenge is an observatory, which is a disputed theory).[4]

19th-century plan of the Works

From 1892 to 1908, the state of Ohio used the Octagon Earthworks as a militiaencampment. Immediately after this, the Newark Board of Trade owned the property, until 1918. In 1910, they leased the property to Mound Builders Country Club (MBCC), which developed the site as a golf course. As a result of a Licking County Common Pleas Court case, a trustee was named to manage the property from 1918 to 1933.[4]

In 1997 the Ohio Historical Society signed a lease until 2078 with the country club. MBCC maintains, secures, and provides some public access to the land. Some citizens believe the country club is an inappropriate use of the sacred site. There has been increasing public interest in the earthworks. Activists have pressed for more public access to the site to witness the moonrise, which observance was planned in the design and construction by the original native builders.[4]

Part of Newark Earthworks State Memorial, the Wright Earthworks consist of a fragment of a geometrically near-perfect square enclosure and part of one wall that originally formed a set of parallel embankments, which led from the square to a large oval enclosure.[2] Originally, the sides of the Newark square ranged from about 940 to 950 feet in length, and they enclosed a total area of about 20 acres.[2] Farming and construction, associated with building the Ohio Canal and the streets and houses of the city of Newark, destroyed much of the square enclosure and its associated mounds.[2] The remaining segment of one wall of the square is less than two hundred feet long.[2]